My product origin story

Like so many Millennials, I graduated college into the Great Recession, a time when even PhDs struggled to get a job at Starbucks. For three years, I tried several (unpaid or low-paying) jobs: restaurant marketing, a personal assistant gig, nonprofit work. At the time, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what I was looking for, I only knew what didn’t fit.

There was little room to change anything in these early jobs. They needed the tasks done, and while I loved the diversity and the wearing of many hats, I wasn’t improving the work. You could say that’s normal for someone in their early 20s, and it’s true; what did I know about business? But over time, I realized that was what I was looking for: the opportunity to make things better.

That period culminated in my being accepted to join the Peace Corps, though I ultimately stayed home because I was drawn back to web development, something I’d always dismissed as a career. Growing up, websites like CNN’s were hideous, and I couldn’t envision the internet any other way. But no matter where I ventured, I always found myself at home in front of screens—learning, creating, or being entertained.

I delved into (yet more underpaid) freelancing for a few years until I was eager for something full-time. Self-taught in markup but not logic, I was behind if I wanted to become a front-end developer, and I didn’t have product design experience, only static web. But I had taste. I could spot things that weren’t working optimally. I could pattern match better than most. Then I participated in a hackathon and learned of a role where I could collaborate with people who were great at their craft, and together we could make the outcome stronger than either of us could alone.

That was the piece I hadn’t been able to name: not control, but participation in the decisions that shaped the end results. Which for me goes back as far as childhood, where I was an adept co-parent to myself—evaluating sleepaway camps or reorganizing my many collections as they grew. I was always trying to improve what was in front of me.

Product management became the place where that predisposition finally had a seat. Not because I wanted to run everything, but because I wanted to help make things better, and product gave me the agency to do it.

My first product role came by the same path I’d just traveled—a former web design client introduced me to his startup-cofounder wife.